Positive Coping During Tough Times

Aka Sweating Sprouts Not Cabbages

Getting swamped by cabbages

In this series of articles I will explore stress, burnout, positive coping strategies and how to get more from life and work.

It felt like a clamp gradually tightening around my neck and shoulder.  I sat frozen in front of my computer, not taking anything in.  My head spun and my eyes were glazed.

There it was. That old familiar feeling of anxiousness that gripped me more often these days.  What triggered it each time, seemed increasingly trivial: a change of timing for a meeting, a request for some dates for a social get-together, or a realisation that I had let the lawn grow just too long to be cut easily.

Trivial, and yet crippling.  What was wrong with me?  I went to bed drained, slept fitfully, if at all, and woke exhausted.  I dragged myself through each day, like wading through thick treacle whilst carrying a sackful of potatoes.

‘You ok mate?’  The question broke my fugue, bringing me back.

‘Oh, yeah mate, I’m good. Just zoned out there for a minute.’

‘You look like crap mate,’ came Geoff’s concerned reply.

‘Ah man, I’m fine.  Just didn’t sleep well last night mate. You know.’ I shrugged. I could do without having to face an interrogation as well as everything else.

‘Well take it easy man.’ Want a cuppa?’  And with that I was off the hook. 

Again.

Looking back, I now realise I was fast approaching burnout.  I had no clue at the time. 

I simply felt I needed to shake it off, pull myself together and get on with it. 

How wrong I was. 

Within a week, I was floored with a viral rash that covered my body, and energy levels through the floor.

It took me months to recover a good portion of my previous energy levels. Decades later, I still have to monitor my energy levels more carefully.  Like a battery in an old car, once drained I never quite hold my charge the same way again.

That experience, along with my years as a police officer led me on a fascinating journey into how people cope. 

Stress is a fact of life. If you are alive then you are in a state of stress. The question is how much and for how long?  What is it that leads to burnout and how can we avoid it?  More than that, how can we thrive rather than just survive? Leverage stress rather than find ourselves crushed by it?

To answer these questions, I need to introduce the cabbages and sprouts. 

I remember as I read about stress, an image from my childhood came to mind. 

Reading about the cumulative effect of the demands of life and work, I thought of the game Cabbages and Kings from children’s programme Crackerjack.

In that game, a number of children would line up to compete for prizes. Every question answered correctly, the child would receive a toy and be expected to hold it.  Every incorrect question they would receive a cabbage and be expected to hold that too.  Three cabbages and you were out.  As the contest progressed, contestants would be eliminated until left with one child desperately holding onto the toys and the cabbages and hoping not to drop them.

Picture that image, if you will.  Because that’s us.  You and me.  We are all holding onto some toys, which represent the positive demands of life - time with family, friends, exercise, fulfilment in our work. They take effort but we view them as rewarding.

The trouble is we also carry a load of cabbages don’t we?  The cabbages represent the negative demands, or those demands we take on in order to enjoy the positives (studying for a qualification for example).  Examples include, work, workload, deadlines, family commitments, financial commitments, caring for a relative and so on.  They also include the pressures we can add in our minds too. Like guilt, worry, ‘should thinking,’ perfectionism and so on. 

As I developed this image in my mind, it struck me that we get weighed down with those stressors, and yet we do our best to carry on. To continue to struggle on carrying that load. Because we feel we have to.  What choice do we have?

The reality is, however, the longer we carry that load without rest, the more exhausted we become and the less able we are to perform or focus effectively.  Our ability to be present, to problem solve, critically think things through, plan or prioritise is destroyed.  As I found when staring at that computer screen feeling utterly crushed all those years ago.

Can you relate?  Or do you work with or lead others whom you believe are struggling like this?  If so, the answer is not to ignore it. In fact the sooner we recognise that our pile of cabbages is mounting and becoming heavier, the better.

But what can you do?  We will explore this over the rest of this and the next article in the series. 

To begin with, we need to recognise the two ‘stress states of mind’:

Overwhelm - that ‘in the moment’ feeling of losing it, panic, anger, freeze, high emotion.

The aim here is to manage the state so as to do minimal damage in a given situation, like saying something you regret. It is also about reducing the emotional temperature in order to get back to the ability to actually think clearly.  The key point here is you are not trying to solve the problem or problems in this state. You are simply aiming to return to a state in which you can  solve the problems.

How? By creating space and time for yourself.  The old adage of ‘breathe and count to ten,’ or ‘take five’ remain true.  It really is about creating space between you and the stressor that has tipped you into overwhelm.  More on this in the next article.

Overload - the underlying problem of carrying around too many cabbages for too long, aka ‘the grind.’

This is where we struggle to see what we can actually do to deal with the demands of life and work. All we can see is cabbages. In other words we can lose perspective on how to actually deal with the individual demands and problems.  It becomes one smelly pile of cabbage.

There are numerous ways of dealing with them, but the underlying principle is to label your cabbages.  In other words, establish what the demands are and why they are causing stress: understand them. 

Then it’s about deciding what to do with them.  Can you ditch a cabbage?  In other words, do you even need to be dealing with it? Is it even your cabbage? We often carry problems and demands around that aren’t even ours.  Can we delegate them?  Can we delay dealing with them (practically rather than procrastinating).

Ultimately, taking action on the cabbages, focusing on what we can do rather than dwelling on what we can’t do is critical.

Enter the sprouts.

This is where we need to understand a big truth about our capacity to handle the cabbages (the big stuff). 

Our brain is rubbish at carrying around the cabbages.

It hasn’t evolved to juggle so much stuff.  It has evolved to be in the moment, pay attention, notice, assess, absorb and deal with the challenges at hand.  Clutter up our mind with cabbages and things get chaotic and unmanageable.

Therefore, when identifying our cabbages, we need to do so outside our head.  In short, get them out of your head and free up your mind. 

Then pick a cabbage.  Which one?  My advice would be to pick the smelliest one. The one you least want to confront and may well have been procrastinating on.  That's likely to be the one carrying the most psychological weight.

Then what?

Then get slicing and dicing.  In other words, break the demand, problem or goal into smaller slices (themes or areas), and then chunk down into sprout sized chunks.  That could be chunks of time or sprout-sized actions.

Your brain can handle sprouts when under stress.

So focus on identifying the cabbage to chunk down into sprouts and sweat those sprouts.

Managing our stress effectively comes down to this core truth.

Your brain will sweat the cabbages and achieve nothing if allowed to do so. 

Instead, step away when overwhelmed, grab a pen and paper and make a list of the cabbages.

Pick one cabbage that needs your attention and then get to slicing and dicing.

Identify sprout-sized actions, work in sprout-sized chunks of time and get to sweating those sprouts.

Happy sprout sweating.

In the next article I will delve further into how to cope more positively and explore the role of self-care in staying on top of our wellbeing and effectiveness.

Dave Algeo, aka the Stressed Guru is a speaker, trainer and coach helping people, leaders and teams achieve success with wellbeing (not at the expense of it). Get in touch with Dave at dave@stressedguru.com, learn more at www.davealgeo.com/